Ghosts of Me and You
by shortystylee
Summary: Inspired a bit by the Less than Jake song. Arya disappears after traveling in Essos after high school, and Gendry is left living in a town full of memories.


It'd been five years since he'd seen her. _Well, if you don't count the odd number of times over the years that she'd posted something on Facebook and a picture of her in some far-flung location would pop up_, he thought. _Or ya know, every time I close my eyes_. Everybody else kept in touch, more or less, whether it was through Facebook, parties at the local university during the first couple of years, or just getting together when they were home visiting or for Winter Solstice. From her though, there was nothing. No postcards with her scribbly handwriting telling him how much he'd love Qarth, or Meereen, or wherever in the Seven Hells she was. No visits back home, not even for Robb's wedding last year. He often wondered what was so godsdamned important that she couldn't even spare thirty seconds to send him an e-mail to let him know she wasn't dead. He'd been certain that he mattered to her, that what they had, young as they were, meant something, but as the years crawled by it was hard to think upon, and he tried his damnedest not to. It was difficult on evenings like this though. Their friends had all come back this weekend. It was only Friday night, but he was sure they'd all see each other again tonight and that Sansa probably had some big get-together at the Stark house planned for Saturday evening. They were currently huddled together, standing on the bleachers that lined the football field, some so it was easier to cheer, some just so they wouldn't have to sit on the cold metal bench. The same bleachers she used to sit with him underneath during Friday night football games in high school, getting high and avoiding her parents. He smiled when he thought about that, about the way she was uncharacteristically shy when she first asked for the joint he'd rolled, the way her eyes were blown out when she figured out how to inhale properly. They found themselves in his parents' basement later, gorging on cheese poofs and he laughed out loud when he all of a sudden thought about how paranoid she was about her mother finding out what they'd been up to when he drove her home that night.

"Something funny?" Jon asked.

_Shit_.

"Nothing really... just the White Harbor defense," Gendry joked.

Jon nodded and turned back towards the game, which was quickly coming to the end of the second quarter. They were in the same spot as they were each year this weekend, watching the annual Homecoming game that pitted Winterfell against their arch rivals from White Harbor.

It was the same group every year, seven years from when he graduated, five years from when she had. Jon, her older cousin, was next to him in the stands. He'd come back from up north for the weekend with his girlfriend Ygritte, who he met the first year he joined the Provincial Parks Service. Hot Pie was there too, looking even bigger under far more layers than were really necessary for the autumn evening, and in the row in front of them were their other friends from high school, Pod Payne, Jeyne Poole, two of the Mormont sisters. At half time they watched the marching band, which would be followed by the crowning of this year's Homecoming King and Queen. Winterfell had always been a tight-knit community, he'd realized that when he first moved up here, halfway through his freshman year. His foster father had found a better job up there and while it hadn't been the first time he'd moved, Gendry had never left the same school district since being placed with the Motts. His worrying, he soon found out, was for nothing. He was the same year in school as Sansa, and long story short, his friendship with her through a school project quickly gave way to his friendship with the whole Stark brood, but it was Arya, the youngest girl, the one who despite being quick-witted and quick on her feet often got left behind in the crowd, that he grew the closest with. She didn't have the attitude that made Sansa and Robb part of the popular group, the high test scores to compete with Bran, or the willpower to act out for attention like Rickon.

They'd gotten along well, just friends in the beginning, and then one day in September at the start of his senior year he saw something different in her. He stayed late most days after school, spending time in the auto shop or wood shop, depending on which project demanded his time at the moment. He wouldn't have seen her at all that day if he hadn't doubled back to the vending machines near the cafeteria, taking a hallway that went past the art studio rooms. It was the music that first made him stop to look - _who would be blasting AC/DC at 5pm in the middle of the school?_ He knew she took all the art classes she could fit into her schedule, but he'd never seen her works for some reason, and he'd most certainly never seen her working. Stopping just outside the room, he watched her through the vertical window in the door for a while. There was a cloth tarp on the ground that at some point had been off-white, but was now spotted with so many colors of paint that it looked like that Jackson Pollack he'd seen on a field trip the year before. She walked barefoot over it, paint-stained feet, paint-stained overalls folded down at the waist, and a gray spaghetti-strap tank top that showed off curves he hadn't realized existed before that day. The large canvas she was working on, taller than she was and probably six feet wide, was angled and he couldn't see what she was painting. _Even if I could_, he'd thought, _she's a much more interesting sight_. Taking a few seconds to sing some lyrics aloud or beat an imaginary drum set, then right back to feverish brush strokes on to jump back, chew on her bottom lip, then come back to the canvas with a delicateness he didn't know she possessed. He was mesmerized by watching her, like how some people find themselves sinking into a symphony or the movements of ballet dancers. When he finally opened the door and walked in, Arya didn't notice, not until the heavy door slammed and she jumped back from her work.

"Gendry... what are you doing here? Shit, you scared -"

"You're amazing."

"What?"

"I said," he started, walking closer, perhaps the closest he'd stood to her before. "You're amazing." He could finally see what she was working on - a large landscape of a scene from north of the wall, all snow and ice with a fiery bright weirwood tree.

"Well, shit, Gen, I hope so. With as much time as I spend in this damned room I better be," she answered, completely missing Gendry's meaning.

It'd taken another full week for him to get up the courage to find her in the art studio once more, this time startling her as she sat at the pottery throwing wheel. The door slammed and she flinched, hands coming together through the wet clay, effectively ruining what she had been working on. Arya had angrily stalked off, boosting herself up to sit on the counter next to the sink. He'd followed, grabbing her hands before she could wash them, and explained that he wasn't just talking about her artwork being amazing. Gendry rambled, talking about how it was her that was amazing, how he was an idiot for not figuring it out, and curious grey eyes stared back, widening when he made it very clear about his feelings. He let go of her hands when he finished his monologue, and was prepared for her to laugh at him, yell at him, even just shake her head and walk away. He'll always remember how she scooted forward on the counter, sighing as if he should've known better, and crushing her lips against his even though he knew she didn't have any experience. Gendry couldn't remember how long they'd kissed for that first time. His memories now were about his hands, one going through her short pixie haircut and one at the curve of her waist. They were about her hands, both tightly fisting his hair and leaving a mess of clay for him to gladly wash out later. They were about her legs, the muscles he could feel in her thighs when she took even more initiative and wrapped them around his waist, using the heel of her Vans to push him even closer into her. They were about the fact that they were in public, a closed door the only defense between them and whoever else might want to use the art studio after hours, and exactly how he didn't give a fuck if anyone walked in on them.

"I knew _exactly_ what you meant last week, Gendry," Arya said when she finally pulled back. "And if you ever again wait a week thinking about whether you should kiss me or not, you're a dead man."

Jon's loud cheering, followed by the rest of the crowd, brought him back to the half time show. Robb, along with two other previous Homecoming Kings placed a crown on top of Rickon Stark's messy ruddy-brown hair, and seconds later there was another roar when Sansa placed a crown on who he thought was the youngest Mormont daughter. _Maybe she's here_, he thought. _There's Sansa, Rickon, Robb.._. He looked around and spotted Mr. and Mrs. Stark, standing in the bottom row of the bleachers with both their cameras flashing away. Bran was seated in his wheelchair next to them and Meera attentively sat beside him, whispering something that Gendry could tell from ten rows away made the boy blush.

He watched for her the next two quarters, hoping that maybe this year was the year she'd show up, coming home from wherever she was, stand next to him in the bleachers, holding his hand and pretending like she cared about the game. Two quarters came and went, Winterfell beat White Harbor 34-10, and in keeping with the past four years, Arya was nowhere to be found.

XxXxX

It'd been ten years since he'd seen her. He'd given up hope dozens of times, decided she wasn't worth it, was never coming back, had probably shacked up with some Norvoshi cage fighter and forgotten all about him and her life back in Westeros.

Each year, everyone came back this weekend. It reminded him of some weird Breakfast Club-esque pact - each year, third Friday in October at 7pm, we meet in the bleachers of the football field at Winterfell High School, to watch them beat the piss out of the pitiful White Harbor team, and then head over to Kneeling Man for beers and pizza. And it worked, each year, like clockwork.

Homecoming weekend aside, there'd been plenty of other celebrations and opportunities for her to come back, but she never did. Gendry had stood up in Jon and Ygritte's wedding, which was almost four years ago now, and Bran and Meera's wedding was just this past summer. Somehow their small destination wedding in The Arbor had turned into a full-blown family reunion, with Starks, Tullys, Karstark cousins, everyone. But she'd missed that. She missed the beautiful outdoor wedding in Arbor wine country, she missed the delicious homemade wedding cake that her mother had made, and she missed Meera looking more beautiful than Gendry could ever remember her. She missed slow dances with him, and while he'd agreed to go to the wedding as just-friends with Sansa, despite her excellent dancing skills and the great time he'd had, he knew it wasn't the same.

Gendry knew her Facebook account was not deleted, and he wondered if she ever logged in to see everything that was happening, since the last picture posted of her was almost nine years ago. It made him sad to think that maybe she'd never seen Robb and Jeyne's twins, her first niece and nephew. She probably didn't know about Sansa's slew of offers from newspapers all across Westeros and the scathing political columns she was known for. Arya was missing everything - Robb taking over the family business and Mr. Stark moving to an advisory position; Rickon playing football at U of W Dragonstone, being drafted for the Dragonstone pro team upon graduation, and the subsequent media frenzy when he announced his engagement to Shireen Baratheon, the owner's daughter; the surprise party they threw for Mr. and Mrs. Stark's thirtieth anniversary two years ago.

The first year hadn't been too bad, it was his junior year at university and he was able to throw himself full-force into his classes as well as his "as close to full-time as you can get" job at one of the local import car repair shops. While he never got any replies to his emails or Facebook messages that first year, he heard from both Jon and Sansa that Arya emailed her father every so often. He'd resolved himself to make it through that year, thinking that what she'd said was right - this was just some sort of gap year - a way to travel and see the world before she settled down.

Over the years Gendry had tried to find plenty of distractions and ways of moving on. He'd received a business management degree from UW Winterfell, had his mechanic's license, and had taken over the shop he worked at. He still felt pathetic though, having just turned thirty this past spring and still mourning the loss of his high school girlfriend. He'd headed to the bar on Arya's 25th birthday, aiming just to have a pint of two and be left alone, but Sansa sat down next to him at the counter before he'd even had the chance to order.

"I was driving home from work and saw you come inside," she explained. "I know why you're here today and it's not good for you to be alone." She stood up and put her coat back on, then handed him his. "Come on, let's go back to mine. No use for you to be sad all by yourself. Misery loves company, isn't that what they say?"

They'd gotten drunk on whatever Sansa had in her kitchen, so two bottles of Arbor wine and some fiery tasting Dornish liquor. She kept two framed pictures of Arya on her side table next to her couch, one of the both of them on Arya's 7th birthday, posing with the misshapen chocolate cake that nine year old Sansa had baked, and the other was one Gendry remembered. Mrs. Stark had taken it after Sansa and Gendry's graduation ceremony - Sansa and Gendry with their grey robes and white tasseled hats, Arya in the middle, a head shorter than both of them. It was good company, getting to reminisce and tell old, slightly embellished stories. Neither of them talked about the night of Arya's birthday later, about how they'd woken tangled up together in bed, Gendry in only his boxers and Sansa dwarfed in one of his t-shirts. They'd been fueled by grief, alcohol, and the desire not to feel so lost anymore, and while it worked splendidly for that night, Gendry made sure it never happened again.

There's most of the fourth quarter left in the game, but White Harbor is so far behind it's almost not even fun to watch. Gendry announced to the group during a White Harbor time out that he's going to head out early and make sure they can get a big enough table at Kneeling Man, and no one argued with him. As he left the football stadium, he sees a couple sitting close together under the bleachers, talking animatedly about something or other, and it makes him think back to his last conversation with Arya, shortly after she'd graduated.

_"So, I was thinking... maybe it's about time we started to move more of your things into my apartment. You've already taken over part of the closet anyways, and it won't be hard to get you on the lease," he adds. He brought the topic up randomly one Saturday morning, while sitting at his kitchen table and going through a stack of mail._

_"Gendry, I can't."_

_"No, no, it's fine. I've talked it all over with your dad, and he's actually completely okay with you moving into my apartment with me."_

_'First, I'm not even going to comment about how you've already spoken to my dad behind my back, that's not as important. I know you've been waiting for me to graduate and start my life with you, but I can't. I'm leaving, in a week. I should've told you sooner, but I didn't know how to."_

_"What do you mean, leaving?"_

That was when she told him, her grand plan to take a gap year, travel the world and see everything. It wasn't that he was against the idea, in the moment it sounded like it might do her some good - get a little bit of the adventure out of her system so she could come back and focus on school and the future. But then, then she said she wanted to be alone, without distractions, and he knew that she meant him.

After she failed to return after that first year, her parents reported her missing and alerted the authorities in Essos, which did little to no good. They'd known where she was when that last picture was taken, but from there, she could've flown off to anywhere. The various state governments in Essos were so disconnected and the police detectives were doing nothing to help find the lost foreign girl, as if that happened every day. The Starks hired their own private detectives, the best their money could pay for, but still there was nothing. It's clear even now that Mr. Stark still hasn't given up hope, despite his wife and many others trying to get him to be realistic.

He walked through the parking lot to where his car was parked, at the very back in a corner spot, specifically for fewer chances of door dings from high school kids. He'd backed his car into the spot and from about 200 yards back could see someone sitting on the hood of the car.

_What the actual fuck_, he thought, feeling himself get angry. _I'd expect to see some kids at the back of the lot smoking or making out, but not sitting on the hood of my car_. He quickened his pace, ready to give some fifteen year old punk a piece of his mind, when he stopped short. He got closer and was able to see better, see the small figure sitting on the hood, one leg straight out, the other pulled up and hugged into its chest, bathing in the yellow-orange glow of the parking lot lights.

Her. _Arya_.

_It seems fitting_, he thinks. _Ten years later and she appears without warning, sitting on my car like she owns the fucking thing. _She sort of does. She was there fourteen years ago when he scraped together enough money to buy it, and she spent countless hours helping him work on it.

He walks closer and when he clicks his keyfob to unlock the car, she finally looks up at him.

"Hey stranger," she says, as if this has all been nothing. Ten days instead of ten years. She's still not made a move toward him, though he keeps getting closer and closer, until he's about a foot away from truly invading her personal space. Gendry wonders if that's still a privilege he's allowed.

"Is that really you, Arya?" Her name slides off his tongue like a prayer, and maybe that's what it is, him praying to her old gods and his new that she's really here, that he hasn't gone completely off the deep end.

She shakes her head and lets out a sigh, the first mannerism he recognizes from her, and he takes it as a sign that he's not making this all up in his head.

"Gendry," she says, flicking her eyes up to meet his and pausing, giving him time to finally look her over. Her eyes are tired, like she's been on the road for days to get here, and she probably has, by the looks of the well-worn drab green hiking backpack that's hanging off her left shoulder. There's a sleeping bag and a yoga mat rolled up and strapped to the bottom. She wasn't dressed strangely - she wore gray jeans scrunched into calf-high burgundy Docs, and a hooded zip up sweater under a black leather jacket, that, much like the backpack, had obviously seen better days. "It's me. I'm really here."

A half-step more and he's inches from her face, still looking her over. It's a face he knows he would recognize anywhere, even if it'd been fifty years and not just ten. Still, she looks older, but it's been a very kind ten years, the loss of baby fat making her face longer and bringing out her cheekbones. Her hair has grown out, longer than Gendry's ever seen it, and he can't help it when he reaches out his hand and runs it through her hair. It curls softly now that it's grown out and he decides he likes it. The curls are wavy, almost lazy, not like the unruly ones that Robb and Rickon have. Gendry is still not sure if he's allowed to be this close to her, to touch her like this after all these years, but just seeing her there isn't enough.

"Please say something, Gendry."

Gendry takes a breath, trying to get a grip on all of the emotions swirling around in his head at the moment.

"I don't know what to say to you. Do you understand what it's like to have you walk away like that, with no contact for ten years? How many times I've wondered if you were dead? What it's like to live in a city where every place I go I can't hide from your ghost? I don't know if I'm ecstatic to see you and want to gather you up in my arms or if I should let you know exactly how furious I am with -"

"Hey," she says, interrupting him. She scoots forward on the hood of the car and reaches out, cupping the sides of his face with both her hands, and stares straight into his eyes. "I'm here now, yea? I'm not dead, or a ghost, I'm back for good... take me home, Gendry."

"To your family? They're all there in the stands, we can just walk over there."

She laughs at him then, just like she used to, and he realizes how much he missed it, thinking he'd never get to hear it again.

"No, stupid," she replies. She pushes herself off the hood of the car and positions herself toe-to-toe with him. "Not to my family. Take me home with you."

She grabs his hand and squeezes gently, and he nods in agreement, opening the door for her. Both were silent on the drive back to his apartment. They stayed up almost all night, sitting on his bed eating leftover pizza from Kneeling Man Inn while he listened to her explain as best she could.

"Fucking gods, Arry... The Faceless Men? They're a cult, for Sevens' sake."

"Yes, I'm well aware of that now," she replied, still stuffing her face full of pizza and breadsticks as if she hadn't eaten in days.

"But how? How does it go from a year of travel to... _that_?"

"Easily, actually," she said with an air of nonchalance that did everything else except put him at ease. "It was almost the end of my first year. I'd been backpacking around the coastal cities, alone at first, then with this Dany girl I made friends with. It was her suggestion to go to this club in Braavos, as some sort of last hurrah, since she was flying home the next day."

He remembers that Facebook picture, the last one posted. _Arya Stark was tagged in a photo by Dany MotherofDragons Targaryen. _

"Getting started, it was fun. I liked their philosophy in theory, liked getting to travel all over Essos... but they start to work on you, without you really noticing. It's like, a personality cult mixed with religious fervor. They all drink this blue shit, tell you it's some ancient drink from Qarth. It doesn't just get you drunk," she explained. "...but you'll trip balls, that's for damned sure. I think they start the brainwashing, I guess you call it that, when you're all strung out, but I don't remember. The effects are residual, I know that now. They'd keep us just on the edge. We didn't care that we had no way to communicate with our family and friends. We followed their gods, did their work, lived in their temples. I just ended up losing myself."

"How'd you get out?"

"For a while, a long while, I don't think I wanted to get out. I enjoyed being no one. You have to believe me, I had no idea what was happening to me. Gods, I even had _friends_... this tiny girl called Waif and Jaqen, he was the first person I met at the club that night." Arya took a deep breath and began to stare at the pattern on the comforter. "It was about six months ago when I started to notice odd things. Vials of medicine I knew were dangerous being hoarded in huge quantities, and then one day our leader," she says, making air quotes, "comes back after two weeks out at a different temple, and I notice all the vials are gone. I didn't think too much about that, or anything, but I noticed the potency of that blue drink changing. It was making me ill, immediately, violently, and I decided to hide that I wasn't drinking it anymore... it was difficult, with everyone around all the time, but I managed. Day by day things got clearer, until one day... we were out in Yunkai and I'd stopped in a cafe to use the bathroom when I heard people chatting about how the leader was wanted by the police for all sorts of things, everything from kidnapping to tax evasion to suspicion of homicide. I didn't say goodbye to Jaqen. I gathered what little I had, and ran. Hitched across Essos, worked for a few weeks in Pentos until I could afford the boat ride to White Harbor... and here I am."

"Were you... ya know, with him? Jaqen?" Gendry asked, not sure why. The name sounded weird without Arya's perfect Braavosi accent to pronounce it.

"Yes, we were," she replies immediately. "He wasn't their leader, but sort of a protégé, I guess is the best word for it. We all had to give up our identities to serve their many-faced god. I'd given up all my possessions, except him. He was mine, and I was his, as much as I could be."

Gendry nods silently, and then the words spill out of his mouth without him thinking it through.

"I loved you," he says, perhaps trying to counter some of the jealousy he feels towards this Jaqen character.

"Past tense?"

"Past, present," he paused, locking eyes with her, "...future, if you'll still have me."

She smiles wildly showing her teeth, rolling her eyes, and giving him the impression that she knew his answer all along. "Yep," she starts, and she walks on her knees across the bed to lean up against the headboard with him, lacing her hand in his. "Still that cheesy Gendry I fell for ages ago. You actually think I'd be sitting on your bed, spilling my guts at this ungodly hour if I didn't want you?"

At some point in the night they both fall asleep, both exhausted from talking, Gendry exhausted from the emotional high, and Arya probably just plain old exhausted.

He wakes up sometime in the morning, when the sunlight first starts to shine through his curtains. Immediately, he remembers what's happened in the last ten hours. He feels a flood of relief pass through him when he rolls over in bed and there she is - curled up on her side, hair fanned out, snoring lightly. He moved towards her, wraps his arm around her waist, and presses a kiss into the back of her neck. She stirs, nestles further into him, but doesn't wake up. All he can think about is how he'll be damned if he loses her again.


End file.
